Bo Horvat was named the 16th captain in New York Islanders history on Monday, one of a series of NHL moves made on the eve of a collective bargaining deadline that ends eight-year contracts league-wide.
Horvat, 31, becomes an NHL captain for the second time. Vancouver selected him ninth overall in the 2013 NHL Draft and named him captain before the 2019-20 season, a title he held until he was traded to New York on Jan. 30, 2023 for forwards Anthony Beauvillier and Aatu Raty and a conditional first-round pick. He has 618 points (300 goals, 318 assists) in 881 regular-season games, including 198 points in 260 games as an Islander, according to NHL.com.
He replaces Anders Lee, who wore the letter for the previous eight seasons and signed a three-year, $16.2-million contract with the Utah Mammoth on July 1. Horvat is entering the fourth season of the eight-year contract he signed with New York on Feb. 5, 2023, six days after the trade that brought him there.
Speaking to NHL.com in late July about what the job requires, Horvat said he would “rather face the music and have to answer the hard questions” than leave that to his teammates.
Nine clubs will open camp without a captain: Anaheim, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Detroit, Los Angeles, Ottawa, San Jose and Vancouver. The Islanders begin their regular season at Toronto on Sept. 30.
The broader story around the league on Monday was the calendar. Buffalo announced it had signed forward Noah Ostlund to an eight-year extension worth $52.8 million, an average annual value of $6.6 million. TSN reported the deal was completed just ahead of Tuesday’s cutoff for eight-year terms. Under the new collective agreement, a club re-signing its own player will be limited to seven years beginning Wednesday, and a team signing a player from outside its organization will be capped at six.
Ostlund, 22, was taken 16th overall by the Sabres in 2022. He appeared in eight games as a rookie in 2024-25, then scored 11 goals and finished with 27 points in 60 games last season as Buffalo reached the playoffs for the first time in more than a decade. He had a goal and an assist in three post-season games.
The extension follows a busy Buffalo summer that also produced a seven-year, $52.5-million deal for forward Zach Benson and a six-year, $17.5-million contract for forward Beck Malenstyn. TSN, citing Spotrac, reported the Sabres project to carry just over $5 million in cap space when their season opens Oct. 1.
Elsewhere Monday, the Montreal Canadiens signed head coach Martin St. Louis to a new four-year contract, NHL.com reported.
In Edmonton, the Oilers spent Monday night in Calgary. The club’s rookies closed their camp against the Flames rookies at Scotiabank Saddledome, a 6 p.m. MT start streamed on Oilers+, with a 25-player roster that included Isaac Howard, Josh Samanski, Connor Clattenburg and Quinn Hutson. No result had been posted to the team’s website at the time of publication. Edmonton opens the regular season at home against the Vancouver Canucks on Sept. 29.
Photo: Bo Horvat during pre-game warm-up with the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Arena, Feb. 3, 2015. Credit: Bure’s Triple Deke via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
